Atheist Dishonesty of "Evidence"

I hope you two don’t live in one of those states where you can take your AR15 to work. You could be shot as a godless meanie.

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Best way to go… :face_with_raised_eyebrow: :sunglasses:

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To see what the loons in question are capable of, look up the murder of Larry Hooper.

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Just to be clear, the guy who murdered him for being an atheist was Shelton…not Sheldon… :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

S’all I’m saying…

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I made no mention of him deliberately for the obvious reasons :slight_smile:

However, Arthur Shelton was a crackpot, and a dangerous one at that. He also had a gaggle of associates who engaged in egregious behaviour in court that the judge apparently didn’t think warranted intervention.

Though to the judge’s credit, he did hand down a sentence of 45 to life.

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I still know people that refer to atheists as “godless commies”. In their mind, anyone not believing in god must be a communist.

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Another of the venomous legacies of Senator McCarthy …

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Is there a difference between a Godless Commie and a theocratic tyrant?

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Yes. The godless commie does not need to appease the followers of a bronze age myth by pretending to believe in it.

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A subjective and unverifiable claim, since individuals vary on what they want / expect from life.

I will say though as a former evangelical Christian (30 years in the faith inluding a year of Bible institute, then 30 years out of it) my personal experience has been the opposite of your claim as to quality-of-life. For example I’ve grieved the loss of many a loved one both before and after I left the faith, and it’s far less fraught and painful when you understand that the story arc of your life is neither personal nor directed for your benefit. It is just a series of things happening, and you don’t have to take them personally, nor compare it to some alleged “victorious Christian life” others think you’re supposed to be experiencing.

So on balance I have been more at peace, had better equanimity, less angst, better personal relationships, and better moral clarity as an unbeliever – beholden only to empathy, compassion and kindness, not to some bronze-age authoritarian conception of "right"eousness. I don’t feel the compulsion to exert control over others anymore, and so can better tend to the development of my character and leave other’s character development to them.

Of course my personal testimony is as worthless as the next person’s except to me. But the trope that atheists are lost shades wandering the earth looking for a salve for their meaningless life that they can never find – yeah, that’s just not true. Sorry. My life is full and rewarding and meaningful in ways it never was and in fact in ways most fundamentalists would be basically incapable of conceiving.

Most of them could not tell you the difference between, say, a communist and a socialist and a social democrat. Their knowledge of both philosophy and politics is generally abysmal.

Then follows the tiresome claims that atheism leads to human rights abuses under totalitarian leaders. You could just as well claim that those things arise from men who wear pants. And they can never explain how it is that the purges of such regimes are never exclusively involve theists, but rather, threats to power and authority regardless of ideology.

And then of course you have the obscenity that those same people don’t recognize a leader that they happen to support is totalitarian – at least not until it’s too late. Christianity Today suddenly figured out a few issues ago that 75% of hispanics targeted by Trump are Christians, and now that those Christians are afraid to go to church where they might be seized and “disappeared”, Trump’s immigration policies amount to depopulating churches. Or at least churches full of people with the wrong accent and/or skin color.

In another post in a different thread, I provided an exposition of the contrast between those of us who paid attention in class, and the mythology fanboys. The intellectual indolence we see in the mythology fanboys, has its roots in the environment where the learning process consisted of “sit down, shut up, listen to what the pastor is saying, and treat it as fact”. Which is basically what happens during sermonising. At no point in the religious indoctrination business, are the mythology fanboys ever expected to question what they are told, and indeed, being too inquisitive is presented as a “sin”, right at the start of their favourite Bronze Age mythology.

What happens in religions other than the Abrahamic species, is a matter I am not familiar with, but I’m not facing online here or elsewhere, small armies of Hindus, Shintos, Taoists or African Animists demanding that I treat their assertions as fact. I deal with what happens to enter my orbit, so to speak, and 99% of the time, the specimens in question tend to be vocal, obnoxious, arrogant, wilfully ignorant and entitlement-riddled American evangelical “Christians” with gigantic pans of chips on their shoulders.

Those of us who were fortunate enough not to endure the aforementioned indoctrination process during childhood, who instead were given the gift of a proper education, and had the good sense to pay attention to said education, learned an entirely different process. Namely, we were subject to a pedagogical system that presented facts and concepts to learn, but then encouraged us in addition to find out for ourselves, that said facts and concepts were genuine, and provided us, step by step, with the cognitive tools required to do just this.

So, as a result of being taught the basic concept of intellectual diligence, and being introduced to a broad spectrum of ideas, of a sort that many mythology fanboys don’t even know exist, we’re equipped to take a proper approach to questions. Unlike the mythology fanboys, we’re equipped to engage in proper joined up thinking, not the bastardised ersatz thereof, that many have absorbed osmotically through a combination of fundamentalist apologetics and MAGA politics, driven by infantile sub-memes concocted in Microsoft Paint.

Indeed, the proper mastery of concepts is strikingly bereft from much of the American education system, particularly those parts corrupted by the fundaMAGA disease. Which is why universities have to waste time undoing the damage, before they can set about providing a proper advanced curriculum. Now, of course, those universities are under direct political attack by the current fascist junta (let’s be honest here, we’re not dealing with a “government” or an “administration”, we’re dealing with a junta, just like that of Videla in Argentina). The future looks bleak for any opportunity of improving American education, and this is another reason why I issued my prediction about the nation becoming Black Death era Mongolia in fairly short order.

One of the most pernicious influences in this downward spiral has, of course, been the deranged level of religiosity that infects the USA, now poisoning everything it touches to an extent that Gregory S. Paul could not have foreseen when writing his seminal paper in 2005. The treatment of curiosity and a quest for knowledge as a “sin”, right at the beginning of the requisite mythology, contributes much to said pernicious influence, along with the weaponising of ruthless enforcement of conformity to doctrine that features in several parts thereof. No one aware of the relevant psychological aetiology, is of course surprised to see religious literalism and fundamentalism, gravitate quickly toward the most retrograde, brutally repressive and bigoted contents, of whatever “holy books” are involved.

What makes the current situation truly weird, however, is the manner in which this has been so successfully manipulated, by the very sort of people who should, if logical consistency enjoyed even a tenuous hold within the realm of faith, be regarded by fundamentalists as their most viscerally repugnant enemies. Though the manner in which the realm of faith in the USA has been infected by the virus of racism, as that virus has infected so much else there, accounts for much of this weirdness.

Very quickly, a lot of Christians there are going to discover, that separation of church and state is actually their best guarantor of religious liberty. They will also discover, in very unpleasant ways, that its disappearance will almost certainly be followed by anachronistic inquisitions, on the part of those scrambling to the top of the pole, in the current pathological socio-political environment. But I’ve said much here in the past, on how complacent mythology fanboys think they will be the ones wielding the thumbscrews, only to discover that instead, many of them will end up being the recipients of said treatment.

A FAFO moment if there ever was one. Christians must know how fractured and in disagreement they are about many things concerning their religion. They all seem to think their version will be the one to prevail. I guess that’s not surprising when each and everyone thinks their version is the one their god has put his stamp of approval on. They all think they’re the chosen ones, but the math says that a lot of them are in for a surprise.

Bullshit.

If I become a believer in Christianity, then which sect do I follow? The Catholics believe everyone isn’t in God’s grace except them . . . and the same is true for almost every other sect, and there are hundreds.

If I become Christian and pick the wrong sect, then I’m screwed for eternity.

So, atheism is a rational answer to this dilemma, and it gives me a lot of inner peace to let go of my fear of eternal damnation, and/or seperation from God.

The violence, homophobia, and sexism that is tied in with the Bible repulses me . . . and I have a better life knowing that I don’t have to persecute other people because they’re trans and/or gay.

I have a better life when I don’t have to live in fear.

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If memory serves, that particular specimen either abandoned this venue of his own volition, or was shown the door. Either way, his presence will not be missed.

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That’s strange. Jehovah was constantly running his mouth in the old testament, appearing in clouds, as fire, talking from rocks, etc. It seems like he was appearing all the time and interacting with people.

But now that his great human experiment is in shambles and the forest is burning down where the hell is he? Where is the cowardly, inept Jehovah when you really need him?

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Probably still occupied with all the young girls taken as sex slaves…

I used to ask Christians why their god isn’t appearing like he did in the Bible and they all say Jesus forgave everyone lol. Sure…okay. :joy:

Then why does God (churches) still need money?

The standard answer I always got was that when the NT canon was closed, signs and wonders were no longer needed because all one needs now is faith that the Bible is true.

It’s the only time where protestants look to the Catholics for cover …